Making my 197 great again

Hi! Last summer i bought my 197. This forum helped me to learn a lot about the car, especially the progress/project threads. So i decided to open my own. I will be posting what modifications/fixes i did or still plan to do, hopefully someone will find it helpful.

The car is bit over 110 000km mileage (68 000 miles for imperial units enjoyers ), running well. Many things to be done to make it according my expectation. My target is to have it as weekend car, occasional track visits but mainly as country roads warrior

More updates coming soon

I started to disassemble some bodywork parts like front bumper, wheel arches, side skirts... I inspected the car and i was happy to see that there is no rust at all, everything looks in good shape. Until i disassembled the scuttle panel area




There was even water pond Car was in garage for more than month, it had to be full of water since last wash



Later on i understood its common issue on these cars. I cleaned everything including drainage holes which were obviously stuck. In the end it didnt look so bad, just the bolts were rusty, bodyshell seems ok



I was not able to get just the bolts without buying complete top-mounts (which were fine) , i didnt want to put some different bolts. So i put the bolts to rust remover for 1 day:



Painted them black and put back on the car. Not perfect, but much better than it was:

VeiRoNv2 said:

nice man,looks great,what rust remover did you use for the bolts?

Click to expand...

I used Nigrin Rust converter - quite cheap, works well

I did some basic service tasks in the meantime:
- Engine oil
- Gearbox oil
- Cleaned throttle body
- Cleaned PCV

Car is fitted with Ramair intake from previous owner. Visually not really nice job, most likely sucking all the hot air from the engine bay:





To fit the intake, battery was relocated behind the seats - main fuse housing unde stayex under the intake. Its housing is more then questionable and visual disaster



Removed all, threw it to trash and started to prepare my own design. Target is to put original air inlet back on the car to provide enough cold air and create proper heatshield around the intake:



The blue "hose" was already fitted to the car, so why not to use it:




Next step -> CAD = Cardboard aided designing

I bought 2x1m ALU sheet, thickness 1mm. Very easy to cut, bend, grind... Started with cardboard, then cut the walls of my new heatshield from Alu



I bought 3D printer recently - perfect opportunity to design and print my own main fuse box and some other parts:





After a lot of sheetmetal playing, most of the assembly was ready:



Next step - painting:



Riveting the assembly together:



Heat reflective foil applied from the outside:



Assembling everything, adding some gold heat reflective tape because NASA!



As a last step i properly cleaned and reoiled the Ramair filter and job done - satisfied with the result, quite an upgrade in comparison to what i bought the car with